


A Dark and Stormy Night

by GraphiteHeron



Series: Menagerie [1]
Category: Dragon Age
Genre: M/M, Scar-Licking, Wordy Sex, kinkmeme fill
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-20
Updated: 2011-08-20
Packaged: 2017-10-22 20:52:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/242452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GraphiteHeron/pseuds/GraphiteHeron
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fill for a scar-licking prompt on the kinkmeme.  Anders is feeling overwhelmed and his scars are aching with the weather, so he goes to the one person he knows of that probably understands how he's feeling.  Fenris is surprisingly accomodating.  Prelude to Menagerie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dark and Stormy Night

Anders isn't entirely sure what makes his feet take him all the way to Hightown in a raging storm. First he had been in his clinic, cleaning up after the mess made by dozens of sick and injured people whirlwinding through his day in a tornado of blood, vomit, bandages, and birthing fluids - amongst other things - mind lost in the day’s conversations with Hawke's menagerie.

Sebastian's inappropriate questions about his treatment back at the Circle, arguing with Merrill over the finer points of her probable future, Fenris... At one time he could have penned a script for his conversations with Fenris. They raged at each other, trading barbed commentary on how each would quite like to see the other locked up in their own personal hell. These past few months, though, the surly elf has been somewhat polite, in his own stilted, socially inept sort of way.

Which may have led to tonight's foolhardy venture, perhaps. Anders needs someone to talk to, Hawke certainly isn't available, not like Anders trusts many people - Justice trusts fewer, and it isn't as if Anders can talk to him either, all things considered. His skin is aching with the weather, and while Justice has a middling comprehension of the injustices of the Circle through Anders' eyes, he has no understanding of what it’s like to be hurt, to feel pain, to be forced to endure things no living creature ought. Fenris, on the other hand, well, the lyrium speaks for itself.  


Regardless of why, precisely, Anders still ends up on the elf's borrowed - stolen? Can one steal a mansion? - doorstep, hair dripping out of its tie, feathers matted to his shoulders, robes utterly drenched, pathetic, looking part kicked kitten and part drowned rat. He knocks on the door once, twice, three times, and despite the roar of the pouring rain he can hear movement on the other side.

Fenris opens his door, staring at the sodden mage for a handful of seconds before Anders' presence seems to register. He’s dressed down to his leggings and a soft tunic. "Is there something you need, mage?" By now the word is less invective, more statement of fact. Anders is a mage, so it would be stupid to call him anything else.

"I just...to talk?" Anders flounders helplessly. He’s having one of those nights where he can't remember the feel of his own personality. Anders does not helplessly flounder. He has a witty rejoinder for everything. Except these nights when everything aches and he feels helpless and the loneliness overwhelms what little of his sense of humor that survived Justice's purge of everything fun.

"To talk," Fenris repeats. If he’s puzzled by this, he doesn't let on. Instead, he stands aside to let Anders in.

For all there are mushrooms growing where the floor tiles are missing and skeletonized remains of his old master's victims still litter certain rooms, Fenris can be a gallant host when he puts his mind to it. He helps Anders out of his sodden coat and padded robe, leads him upstairs to sit by the lit fireplace, blanket draped over shaking shoulders. Thus settled, Fenris sits on the floor beside Anders. The book and the bottle of wine already there hint that Fenris had been practicing his reading.

"You wanted to talk," Fenris reminds him when the silence has gone on too long.

"I've forgotten about what, by now," Anders replies, on the verge of hysterical laughter or tears or both. "If I ever had an idea to begin with. Maker, it's just been one of those days and now the weather's changing and everything just hurts and I thought maybe you'd understand and - Andraste's knickerweasels, I'm rambling. I should go, or something. Isabela was right you know...you do have pretty eyes."

Anders is fairly certain that standing out in the cold rain has addled his senses, because he had in no way intended to say that last bit out loud. Oh, he's been thinking it. Hard not to think it when it’s so blatantly obvious, but he hadn't meant to say it.

Fenris actually smiles in response, a tug at the corners of his thin lips, a relaxing of the tightness around the aforementioned pretty eyes.

"Just when I believed you were getting predictable, you show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night and tell me I have pretty eyes. Next you'll tell me you've secretly been pining for me all these years."

Anders flinches. "Not so secretly. Varric hinted at it in one of his latest books. Isabela had a few suggestions - I'm sure you can guess the gist of that. Really, I just wanted to ask if changing weather made your skin hurt too, but now I've gone and made an idiot of myself."

"In comparison to Hawke's sense of humor? You still have a ways to go yet before you look or sound like an idiot." And there is the rumored charm that Hawke and Varric insist Fenris is occasionally capable of. Small smile, easy tone of voice. Theoretically it had to be possible, though Anders has never before seen evidence of it. But then, even cacti are soft if stroked between the spines.

On impulse, he leans forward, intending a brief kiss - testing the waters, and if he’s going to die for the overture, then he’s going to die having done something he's wanted to do for a while. What he gets is Fenris meeting him halfway and trapping him for interminable heartbeats in a searing, wine-flavored kiss that has all of Anders' remaining senses scattering.

It occurs to him belatedly that the stilted and awkward politeness of the past few weeks might have been Fenris' idea of courtship.

Anders groans into the kiss, eagerly opening up to Fenris' invasion of his mouth. He’s missed kissing. Always took it for granted before, then Justice happened - Justice who is strangely quiet at the moment - and kissing had followed drinking and lying right onto the list of things Anders is now Not Allowed to do.

Fenris is not the most skilled kisser Anders has ever locked lips with, but he still has a certain appeal. That and Anders has wanted him fiercely for no fewer than three years. All and everything considered, Anders would certainly not mind if this night's first kiss becomes a first of several other things. Natural progression of things, after all. Kissing might become touching, and hopefully touching might become something more.

Anders stops thinking there because his first prediction has come true and Fenris' lyrium-striped hands - sans clawed gauntlets for the first time in Anders' memory - are slipping under his shirt and those wicked fingertips are tracing the contours of flesh that has not been touched in far too long.

Those fingertips, incongruously soft for all the strength they have and all the damage they are capable of causing, stroke a few of the scars Anders acquired in Amaranthine, located somewhere along his belly and side, just above his hip. Fenris' fingers move further back, under Anders' shirt, from the bottom of the mage's shoulder blade down to his hip, a soft caress skimming over glossy patches of scar tissue and furrows of knotted flesh. Fenris freezes at the feel of these, causing Anders to withdraw from the kiss to see what’s wrong.

"Fenris?"

"I...your back," the elf stammers. "I was startled by what felt like whip marks."

Anders tries to smile. "What, surely you didn't think I worked so hard to escape the Circle because they didn't feed me enough pie? Although they didn't, but that's beside the point."

The mage peels off his shirt - slightly damp, not anywhere near as drenched as his robe and coat - and lets the firelight play across his pale skin, shadows dancing and pooling in the many dips, gouges, and crevices of his scars. Many are from his Warden days. Darkspawn wounds just never seem to heal right, even with magic and proper care. Most are from his days as an aspiring apostate working his hardest to escape the Circle. Fenris' hands explore the ravaged expanse of ruined skin with something between reverence and shock.

"How? Why? I thought..."

"That Circle mages had it easy? Some do, I suppose. It depends on how willing you are to be a good little prisoner. I happened to like fresh air, though. Each of those has a story, I guess. Nothing as heroic as that slash across Hawke's nose, but still."

"Tell me? I...I admit, I am curious to know how you came by these."

They come to a sort of unspoken agreement. Fenris touches a scar, or a collection of scars, and Anders explains how that scar came to be on his body. The ones on his front are the easiest to see, the easiest to talk about. They start there.

Fenris' hand comes to rest on a starburst-shaped scar on Anders' belly. Anders grins wryly. "All of Isabela's jokes about being spitted on a spear? Absolutely not fun. Or maybe that's just when a hurlock is on the other end of it. On the bright side, the Commander owed me dinner for saving his life - and you know, Wardens eat. A lot."

A clean scar on his chest, where a sword barely missed his lungs and heart. "Oh, templar did that. Ser Rylock was convinced I'd talked a horde of darkspawn into killing her men - before I was a Warden, mind you - and wanted me dead. I got conscripted. She didn't like that, so she set a trap for me in Amaranthine. She got me once, and then the Commander took her head off. Quite the bit of fun, actually."

The lyrium embedded in Fenris' fingers tingles against Anders' skin. Some of his scars are thicker, deadening the sensation. Others are so thin that the buzzing of the lyrium is just this side of painful. In between it is otherwise pleasant. But then Fenris' curiosity inevitably leads his hands to Anders' back.

They lay the blanket out and sit on it, the warmth of the fire enough to keep Anders from shivering - from the cold, at least - and Anders drapes himself across Fenris' lap, giving the elf an unobstructed view of the carnage his skin has become.

Fenris touches a series of glossy burns, places where heated metal had been pressed into the mage's flesh. Anders sighs, shifting to get more comfortable on Fenris' lanky legs.

"That was the first time I tried to be stupidly heroic. I should have left a friend out to dry and saved my own skin, but instead I tried to help and ended up making it worse for both of us."

"The first time?"

"I've done it twice now. The second time was Justice. The first, Jossalyn Amell. She was...well, she was pretty, and sharp, both wit and tongue. Had a sense of humor. And not many friends. Dangerous combination, in the Circle. I'll admit, Ferelden's Circle is a lot better than the Gallows. Knight Commander Greagoir never allowed abuses to occur if he could stop them. But what could he stop if the abuses were anonymous? Those bucket-head helmets serve a purpose, you know, obscurity, and putting one group of people - helplessly at the Chantry's whim and hopelessly addicted to a mind-altering substance - in charge of another people, who are essentially anathema to their entire faith..."

"You're rambling again." Fenris' voice is tinged with more sympathy than Anders expected.

"Sorry. Point was, Jossalyn - a friend of mine - was under attack and I thought I could help her if I stepped in. I couldn't. All I got was both of us hurt worse. They made me watch them r...hurt her. Chained up in magic-eating shackles. If I closed my eyes, they cut her. And then they burned me for being 'uppity'. We tried to report them to the Knight Commander, but neither of us had seen their faces. It's not like here. Meredith doesn't punish templars. They don't have to worry about being identified. Talk to that mage-boy Alain in the Gallows recently? Ser Karras just wanders in every other night and it doesn't even matter if Alain screams, because no one's there to help him."

Fenris hums something contemplative under his breath. "And these?"

The whip marks. Anders knew they would get to the whip marks eventually. He had originally thought they would be the hardest to talk about, but after talking about the burns - some of them at least - when all he wants is to deflect and ramble off-topic and anything-anything-ANYTHING to distract from the memories of that night and his friend's screams in his head, suddenly the whip marks feel like an escape.

"Eighth try's the charm. After I got hauled back from my seventh escape attempt, beaten bloody, broken bones, Greagoir ordered the softest punishment he could think of. Solitary confinement, for a year. It'd at least give me time to heal, he thought. I didn't make it there in one piece. Female templars are the worst, you know. It's like they have something to prove."

"This, at least, I can identify with," Fenris murmurs. "It may have been Danarius who owned me, gave me my markings, ordered me to do things I hated, but he was kind and generous to me in comparison to his pet apprentice."

"Ah, Hadriana, was it? I know I said a few things when you killed her, but now seems like a good time for honesty. Seeing as that bitch was part of the reason Circle mages are treated like they are, I'm glad she's dead."

"Wait, what?"

"At least half of the beatings I got were punishment for the crimes of the original Tevinter Imperium. I tried to tell the clergy that I didn't personally murder Andraste, but they never seemed to believe me."

"You seemed to be speaking of the Tevinter Imperium rather highly before. You're even wearing this." Fenris plucks at the chain for the Tevinter Chantry amulet Anders is wearing.

"A gift from Hawke. It's shiny and subversive, just like me. I..." Anders falters for a moment, torn between his beliefs, his wants, and that dormant bit of himself that isn't himself at all. "I joke about the Imperium. The entire Chantry system here is corrupt and nothing is working. But I'd never make it in the Imperium. I have this unfortunate allergy to slavery and blood magic, you see. It's all very tragic."

Humor is Anders' lifeline when he gets upset about something. It always has been, though sometimes his humor is lacking these days because Justice can’t understand what a coping mechanism is or what it’s for.

Fenris absently strokes Anders' back, fingering over marks left by the sharper bits of templar armor. Some of the scars are new. Fenris needs no explanation because he bore witness.

Magic could probably have easily healed these last marks away without a trace, but Anders no longer heals his own wounds. Always, now, his reserves of restorative magic are for his patients at the clinic and the comrades he travels with. This observation has deadened Fenris' hostility toward him, cementing Anders' position in Fenris' mind as Not A Magister.

They still debate their beliefs. Intellectual debate, however, isn’t raging hatred even on a bad day.

"It'd be nice to walk down a street, declare I'm a mage, and have nobody give a damn," Anders remarks after a time. "It's all most mages here, outside of the Imperium, want. Except for the obvious, here in Kirkwall. And that feels really very nice, by the way."

Fenris' fingers are still dancing lightly across the patterns of ugly scarring, lyrium tickling the knotted flesh until goose bumps raise between the gnarls. Anders is having a difficult time reconciling his initial desperate mood with this weighty and utterly civil conversation (with Fenris, of all people!) and this runaway feeling of arousal. His lips have not forgotten that kiss, even if his skin and the marks on it have hijacked their night for the time being.

"It surprises me, that you seem to welcome my touch," Fenris admits. "It seems very few people have ever touched you without marking you."

Fenris himself is tetchy about being touched, Anders knows. And purely from a healer's perspective, he can understand. The memory of pain that intense lingers, poisoning further touch until that hurts just as badly, even if it oughtn't. Anders, however, is a defiant little chit and that was what had gotten him marked so badly in the first place. This is his way of staring those memories of pain straight in the eye and flipping them a series of rude hand gestures.

"I'm determined to like it when you touch me in spite of the marks," Anders replies firmly, arching his back up into Fenris' hand like a cat would just to prove the point. "Or maybe I just need you. Or something. Please don't stop."

"Well, you did ask nicely." Further proof that Fenris can in fact be funny when he chooses to be, and then thought doesn't matter because Fenris is touching him in earnest, open palm stroking down his spine, thumb rubbing slow circles over the history carved into Anders' skin. Between simple touch when he has been aching to be touched for so long, and the lyrium so unique to Fenris, Anders is about to melt into a puddle of cuddly mage-goo all across Fenris' lap, and wouldn't that be awkward?

"Has anyone ever told you you're a good listener? Because you're an excellent listener when you feel like it." Babbling, yes, but Anders is trying not to let it slip how badly he's needed to talk about the wounds of his past, how badly he's needed someone to hear him, understand him, if only for a little while, how insanely grateful he is that Fenris didn’t do the logical thing and just slam the door on his face. And this. Fenris' touch is soothing away much of the ache of the weather.

Fenris moves, sliding his legs out from beneath Anders so that he can sit across the mage's hips and more freely explore the tangled webs, tracks, and furrows of scar tissue with both hands. Anders feels Fenris lean forward, is about to ask what the elf has in mind, and then he feels Fenris' lips feathering against a particularly nasty knot of scarring.

"Sometimes you talk too much," Fenris murmurs against Anders' shoulder blade. Anders, in turn, clams right up with an undignified squeak. Fenris chuckles, and Anders feels the moist, hot pressure of Fenris' tongue tracing along one of the raised lines left by a whip.

Anders lets his breathing run away from him, rapid, fluttery breaths that make him somewhat dizzy, but nowhere near as dizzy as the idea that Fenris is licking - licking! - his scars. This is not how he'd envisioned the night going after that heavy conversation. Actually, this is better. Much better.

The memories of the pain inflicted when the scars were created melts away under the heat of Fenris' tongue. The elf carefully tongues down every scar on Anders' back, starting up at his shoulders and working downward, crawling backwards when he needs to get to Anders' lower back. And from there, back up, adding little nips where the skin is unblemished, suckling kisses where the scars are thickest. Anders is shivering again, not from cold and not from the instinctive terror of his memories, but from sheer want.

Is there a better way to take the edge off of living nightmares? No, no, Anders can't think of one at the moment.  
Point of fact, he can't actually think. Fenris has skillfully rendered him pleasantly brainless.

"That's very, very nice," Anders stammers at last. "And you're making me think we're both overdressed."

Anders watches Fenris' shirt fly off into a corner, which means they are both down to pants and bare chests. Fenris is a comfortably warm weight sitting across Anders' hips, rather heavier than he looks. Then again, it’s not necessarily the lyrium in his skin that makes Fenris dangerous; the elf is, for all his slenderness, still solid muscle.

Is it wrong to find that deceptive strength insanely attractive?

Fenris leans down, chest pressing into Anders' back, teeth nipping the mage's ear. "Impatient, mage."

"Sorry. I'm rather used to rushing these things. They can't punish you if they don't catch you." Something else niggles at the back of Anders' voice, an anxiety that the man himself can't name. But it spurs him on, urging him to hurry and have done with this tryst and leave, so that he won't have to face...something.

Anxiety would be so much more convenient if it up and announced itself by name instead of lurking, but by that time it wouldn't be anxiety anymore and the entire point would be moot.

Fenris sooths his earlier nip at Anders' lobe with a lick, followed by a brief kiss. "No one hunts you here, mage. No one waits to 'catch' you, no one will punish you." A few heartbeats of consideration, and then Fenris amends, "Well. No one will punish you unless you wish to be punished, but I doubt that was your intention in coming here tonight."

The longest string of sentences Anders has ever heard coming out of Fenris' mouth and it’s comfort directed at him. It feels good to hear it. Mostly because Fenris is not in the habit of saying things he doesn't mean - excepting, of course, when he’s spitting mad about something - and because Fenris has one of those voices. The elf sounds very pleasant when he’s murmuring reassurances into Anders' ear, breath hot and lips brushing the shell with every word.

It occurs to Anders that though his scars might be interesting from a perspective of curiosity about his past, they might be otherwise repulsive. Ugly. Ah, hello, previously unnamed anxiety. So nice of you to introduce yourself at last.

Fenris draws back until he can lave attention on a particularly nasty burn scar on Anders' shoulder, ordinarily hidden beneath his ridiculously feathery robes. The scar itself is thick, nearly as thick as leather, glossy and twisted as if polished smooth. Some burns heal like that; others look as though the skin is perpetually sloughing off. In that respect, Anders is lucky. His are contact hot-metal burns. The shiny kind, not the falling-off kind. Still, they hold little appeal to the eye or to the touch, and had until this point made Anders relatively comfortable with his Justice-enforced chastity.

Fenris seems full of comfort tonight. Perhaps that’s the point of this renewed attention? To tell Anders without words - because they both absolutely suck with words - that he’s not a malformed and hideous monster? That, despite his marks, he’s worthy of desire?

That last thought echoes around in Anders' head, forcing him to think despite the pleasant distraction of Fenris' attention to his ravaged back.

It’s blatantly obvious, actually, once he starts thinking about it and remembers that he and Fenris are both convoluted, backwards creatures. They have that much in common.

Yes, it could very well be that Fenris is trying to tell him he’s still worth desiring, even after everything. Also, in his own way, Fenris could be begging Anders to tell him that he is also worthy of desire. It could be all of that and then some; just because Fenris tries to be uncomplicated doesn't mean he succeeds.

While his mouth is busy suckling Anders' thicker scars, Fenris' hands are wandering up and down the mage's sides. The hands of a man desperately needing to be touched, Anders thinks, but too afraid to allow touch. Anders shifts under Fenris' weight, turning over beneath him so that Fenris straddles his lap instead of his lower back.

From this position it’s easy to lean up and kiss the elf again, and Anders does, thoroughly. It’s a wet, messy, desperate kiss, and neither of them can claim much skill for it. Anders' hands rest on Fenris' as-yet clothed hips, almost moving up to caress the elf's sides when Fenris grabs his wrists, probably more harshly than intended. Anders will have bruises in a few minutes, perfectly defined fingermarks that will be yellow with depth in a few days.

"Fenris?"

"I...apologize. The lyrium..."

"Does it still hurt you?"

Fenris shrugs helplessly, markings glowing dimly. "Sometimes I cannot tell pain from remembered pain. All I remember is touch being uncomfortable."

Fenris has been exactly what Anders needed this night. It’s about time for him to return the favor, by his own reckoning. And by the reckoning of something that feels distantly like Justice, who is politely staying out of Anders' business for the time being.

"Well, you're in luck then. Making pain disappear happens to be both a specialty and a personal hobby of mine. That is, if...I...you...magic." Anders starts out with some of his old charm, but that devolves into nervous stammering. He'd forgotten for a moment. Fenris. Magic. Matches and whiskey, that sort of thing.

Fenris, to Anders' surprise, tucks his face into the mage's neck and nods. "I...trust you, as much as I know how to," the elf murmurs.

"Then I shall endeavor to make that trust well-earned," Anders whisperes back, more touched than he wants to let on.

These are words that Anders is willing to guess that no mage has ever heard from Fenris before. 'Mage' and 'trust' are usually mutually exclusive from Fenris' vocabulary. 'Trust' and 'anyone', rather - a life of slavery and amnesia does not lend itself well to good faith.

Determined not to disappoint when Fenris is obviously making an effort, Anders calls on a warm blue ball of healing magic, letting his mana seep into Fenris' lyrium veins with the pleasant smoothness of melting chocolate. He has healed Fenris before, but never like this. Always in battle, surrounded by chaos, being watched by people who doubt they’re adults who can conduct themselves civilly without killing one another.

Never alone, never focused entirely on how Fenris is feeling, and not just what will keep him alive. He's never had the energy to spare for minor aches and pains, or pain that is memory and not manifest. But tonight it comes easily - perhaps Justice's own way of thanking Fenris for listening, for not leaving them out in the rain, for being willing to compromise, if just this little bit.

With hands full of healing magic, soothing away persistent aches that Fenris has, by this point, simply learned to ignore, his lips trail down the elf's throat, tongue flicking out to trace the pattern of lyrium that stands out so prominently on Fenris' neck.

And maybe Justice is quiet and quiescent because he knows that manifesting will break Fenris' trust, he'll throw them out, and the spirit will never again be allowed to taste the lyrium-song in Fenris' skin like this. For once, Anders and Justice are in complete agreement about something in a way that still clearly defines one consciousness from the other.

Justice's desire to lick Fenris is relatively innocent. Spirits have no concept of sexuality, since they’re not reproductive creatures. Anders' desire to lick Fenris isn’t innocent at all, and has everything to do with sexuality. Regardless, they are both able to indulge.

The light of Anders' magic wars with the firelight across Fenris' skin, making him a riot of red-gold and white-blue shadows. The elf's face is more relaxed than Anders has ever seen, blissful even. The lyrium markings glow blue where Anders touches - at his sides, where Anders' hands are, at his throat, where Anders is still kissing.  
"Better?" Anders asks, muffled by Fenris' neck.

Fenris manages an incoherent grunt, a nod, and finally, "Yes." Short, simple, to the point. Fenris usually favors responses like that.

"I know you told me about rushing things and why we don't have to, but I feel I have to point out that you have a perfectly, well, no, mostly serviceable bed right over there. And we're both still overdressed."

Fenris is up and undressing quickly enough after Anders mentions the bed, though his blissful expression has faded to one of trepidation. Anders nearly feels uncomfortable undressing when Fenris looks so damned vulnerable. But Fenris, naked now, is not having Anders balk when they’ve come this far. Strong, slender hands, glowing, shaking, work at the infuriating system of belts that Anders has locked himself up in with terrified impatience until Anders grabs his wrists, stopping him.

"Hey now," the mage says, softly. "I'm a prat, you know. You don't need to take me seriously when I say things like 'there's a bed over there'. If you don't want this..."

Fenris rests his head against Anders' neck again. With both of them standing, the height difference is more apparent than when they'd been sitting down. Fenris is quite tall for an elf, a breed of short, slender people, but Anders is - as his chosen moniker implies - from the Anderfels, where people grow taller than in most places. Fenris would have to stand up on tip-toes if he wanted to hook his chin over Anders' shoulder.

"I want this," Fenris replies, sounding like he's only half-way lost his nerve. "I simply...I..." He takes a shuddering breath, tries again. "My scars are not so visible as yours, I think."

Cold like ice water trickles down the inside of Anders' ribcage. "Did Danarius ever -"

"No." Fenris draws back far enough to look away. "Hadriana, a few visiting magisters, though."

"Fenris..."

"No," the elf repeats, more firmly this time. "Mage. Anders. I... appreciate your concern. But they have owned me for too long. I want...I need...I need break their hold on me. And I want you."

Fenris seems to gather strength from stating his desires and putting them out there, claiming ownership of them. His hands stop shaking, and the belts come off of Anders' trousers that much easier.

"Well then," Anders breathes, letting go of Fenris' wrists and allowing the elf to undress him completely. He tries not to look honored. It probably shows anyway; he hasn't had a gambling face since Justice, and even then he'd been relatively easy to read.

"If that's how you feel about it, then we're going to do this properly."

Kissing Fenris again, Anders gently propels the elf back toward the dilapidated but otherwise well-kempt bed, laying him down gently when they get there. He's had his wounds and scars confronted, comforted, now it’s his turn to provide the same for Fenris.

Anders kisses and licks down the lyrium inlays in Fenris' flesh. The elf has very few actual scars. Perhaps the lyrium helps him heal cleaner, or perhaps he just has that kind of skin that doesn't scar when it heals - some people are like that, blank pages while others are entire tomes of history carved in living relief.

There is no hesitation, no teasing, when Anders follows the curling filigree down to Fenris' cock - not quite hard yet, not quite not. He wraps his lips around the tip and sucks him down, just about swallowing Fenris' cock until it stands to full attention and is just a little too thick to keep going like that.

Recalling some of his old tricks, Anders summons a tiny fraction of a spell he hasn’t used in a very long time, conjuring grease to his fingertips. He looks up for just long enough to see Fenris watching him, chewing on his lower lip to keep from vocalizing.

"You're sure?"

"Don't stop."

Anders licks Fenris' cock - which sports its own lyrium markings - base to tip, slowly working his grease-coated index finger into Fenris' entrance. Fenris tenses at the intrusion, but gradually relaxes. Anders gives him the time to, sliding just that one finger in and out while his mouth mimics the rhythm above.

When Fenris feels relaxed and responsive to the first finger, Anders works in another, just as gently. Lyrium-striped fingers bury in the mage's blond hair, sending the tie tumbling off in an unseen direction. When he works his way up to three fingers, Anders twists them just so and aims for that one special place that once had Isabela loudly declaring that men were built to love being rammed up the ass. Crudely put, but accurate enough. The pressure has Fenris arching off the bed, gasping.

Anders frees his mouth before he can choke. "Feel good so far?"

"Yes," Fenris hisses, rocking back on Anders' fingers. "Very much so."

Apparently. Fenris is glowing again. Dimly, at first, but he flares brightly whenever Anders applies new pressure to his prostate. The feedback from the lyrium has Anders' own body thrumming in anticipation, and he hasn't even been touched yet. Anders withdraws his fingers from Fenris' body, kisses his way back up to the elf's lips, putting his other hand to Fenris' and linking their fingers.

"Please, please, stop me if I hurt you," Anders pleads, the blunt head of his cock just resting at Fenris' entrance.

"I am not fragile, Anders. You are not going to break me."

"Yeah, but if I took that for granted I'd be no better than every bastard - or utter bitch, for that matter - who's ever touched you before," Anders argues, smiling weakly. "You're not fragile. You're one of the most resilient people I've ever known. But that doesn't mean you don't deserve a little gentleness here and there."

Anders aligns himself and pushes in slowly, not forcing the resistance he meets at first. Initial penetration is always the most difficult part. After the head of his cock pops in, the rest follows easily. Fenris is breathing very deliberately, working to stay relaxed when instinct tells him to fight the intrusion into his body. Anders stops once he’s fully sheathed, squeezing Fenris' hand and kissing his forehead.

"Still doing okay?"

"Just...a moment, please."

"As long as you need."

For a few minutes, they stay like that. Anders' free hand rubs at the small of Fenris' back, conducting just enough healing magic to ease the ache. He kisses Fenris' neck, tonguing along the length of his ears, discovering that Fenris' ears are extremely sensitive. Anders spends time there, nibbling the pointed tip, exploring every depth and inside curve, until Fenris is relaxed around him and making little noises of pleasure at the attention his ears receive.

Fenris drapes one leg around Anders' waist, the other heel digging into the edge of the bed, which gives him the leverage to pull Anders deeper. Taking that as his signal to move, Anders withdraws and pushes forward again, slow and gentle. Because Fenris had a point. No one hunts him here; no one is going to walk in and punish him for this liaison. He can take his time, savor every movement.

Savor every reaction. Fenris reacts like he’s used to mindless pounding - given his past, he probably is - all wide-eyed and curious at the slower side of sex. The elf's lips find an arrow scar on Anders' collar.

If they ever do this again, they will have time to try new things. Maybe trade places, maybe indulge in a little mindless pounding of the purely consensual variety, but until then Anders likes it slow and easy and it’s probably the best salve for the scars Fenris bears in his soul and what little memory he can still call his own.

He strokes down a curling line of lyrium, fingertips tracing along Fenris' shoulder. "Why do these lines have to be so beautiful when they caused you so much pain?" the mage murmurs.

"Causing pain beautifully is everything about Tevinter," Fenris replies. "The magisters would say your templars have no imagination."

Anders has to laugh. It’s funny, but it really isn't; it’s dark and hopeless and bleak and horrifyingly true. But there’s something about the wry tone in Fenris' voice that draws a laugh from Anders, which Fenris shares, two survivors bonding over what they have survived.

"I've never heard you joke about that before," Anders observes, hips still rolling at the same sedate pace. "It suits you. It means you win - they haven't broken you completely if you can laugh about it later, even if you really shouldn't. Especially if you really shouldn't."

"You are touching me," Fenris points out. "If they had broken me completely we would not be doing...this." The crude words come easily to other people. Not Fenris. That’s fine. Anders can be lewd enough for both of them. Or maybe he’ll censor it just a little bit, in keeping with their general mood.

"Doing what? Indulging in tender lovemaking while that blasted storm rages outside?" As if to punctuate his point, lightning flashes through the windows, illuminating everything an eerie blue similar to Fenris' markings for just an instant, followed in a matter of heartbeats by thunder so intense it shakes the mansion to its framework.  
"If that is what you wish to call it."

Anders keeps his fingers linked with Fenris', his other hand moving to Fenris' temporarily neglected erection. The mage's grip is firm, but gentle, motions as slow as his thrusts.

"I do," Anders replies. A drop that might be sweat or rainwater or both trickles from his scalp and down his face, breaking and dispersing once it hits the perpetual shadow of stubble that Anders can never seem to successfully shave.

"There was a time tonight," the mage begins after a few further minutes of quiet, the only sounds their breathing and the slightly squishy slide of his cock inside of Fenris, pushing around the magical grease. "A time I thought you would be taking me. Over there by the fireplace, lips and teeth and tongue lavishing attention on scars no one has ever touched before. I thought for sure you would have me there, on my knees, your cock piercing me again, and again, and again, until the only word I could scream was your name, and to beg you for more."

Fenris shifts beneath him, jade eyes unfocused, bottom lip clamped between sharp white teeth, a strained whimper escaping despite the elf's best efforts at remaining unaffected. Anders grins. It’s a little strange, narrating a scenario so reverse to what they’re actually doing, but the idea has some real merit. Perhaps next time?

"A-ah, really?"

"Quite really. We were positioned just so, and you're more than strong enough to put me wherever you want me, after all. My imagination got some ideas, you see, about how the night would play out. I thought we'd be there, you inside of me, maybe you'd sink those perfect teeth into my shoulder while you took me, maybe you'd keep licking the scars."

Fenris moans, sweat beading on his brow. The hand not laced with Anders' strokes down the mage's back, raking his nails down gently enough not to tear any of the scars.

Anders can't shut himself up, at this point. Fenris' reaction to what he’s saying is far too good to pass up. He has to work to keep the pace slow, though, not let his hips snap to the speed of the fantasy he’s spinning into words for their mutual benefit.

"I'd be too full of you to think straight. You're thicker than any man who's ever taken me before - it'd burn, but it would feel so very, very good. I'd see stars, beg you to take me harder, make me feel it in the morning."

Fenris shifts again, breathing rapid and shallow.

"I'd scream your name, at the end. You wouldn't even have to touch me; your cock would be enough, your cock and that wonderful, growly voice you have, and I'd be screaming for you and I'd come, and then I'd feel you come, deep inside of me, fingers leaving bruises in my hips, and...”

Fenris bites sharply just above Anders' collarbone, and climaxes, spilling his seed across their bellies and chests, groaning. Anders lets the force of Fenris' orgasm carry him over too, and heartbeats later he releases, filling Fenris with his own liquid heat.

"And?" Fenris prompts, panting.

"Hm? Oh, right, and then we'd collapse together in a sweaty, sated heap over there by the fireplace and fall asleep, still all tangled up," Anders finishes, a little breathless himself. "Because you're the kind of lover I could see myself waking up next to in the morning."

***

Outside of the mansion, the storm wrings itself out, breaking with the dawn. The world is grey, wet. The fireplace is cold, burned out, untended. Anders' clothes are at least half dry, damp instead of dripping, laid out in front of the cold hearth as if trying to absorb the merest memory of heat.

For the first time in his life, Anders wakes up to the warmth of another person, instead of alone or whatever his version of 'alone' is these days. Fenris' head is tucked snugly under Anders' chin, breath tickling across the mage's throat and collar.

Sometime after the night's activities they managed to clean up and tuck themselves in under the blankets. The bedding still smells of them, likely will for some time. Anders inhales deeply, committing the scent to memory. He sighs contentedly and curls closer to Fenris.

It’s nice not to be alone, if only for a brief moment. But Anders doesn't expect it to last. He and Fenris have too much in common. Running away is Anders' first instinct whenever anyone tries to get close to him. He has a feeling Fenris will feel the same, once he awakens. The elf had dreams that night, said things in his sleep. It’s not beyond belief that perhaps what they did has knocked some things loose in the shadowy corners of Fenris' head. Or so the night's muttering lead Anders to think.

Eventually, Fenris stirs. The elf seems surprised that Anders is awake first. Surprised, and a little scared. Of what, Anders only has his speculations.

"Good morning," Anders murmurs, pressing a kiss to Fenris' forehead. The elf flinches, wincing at his own reaction.

"I...apologize, for that. You have done nothing to earn my distrust." Fenris sighs. "I just - I remembered, things, names, people. For a moment, I remembered everything."

"And now it's gone."

"And now it's gone," Fenris agrees. "Last night was better than I had imagined, but I can't...I can't..."

"I understand, Fenris. At least a little." Only Anders' problem is that he remembers too much sometimes and finds himself unable to forget, barring those moments when he’s nothing more than a blind-deaf-mute passenger in his own suddenly glowing, supernaturally strong body when Vengeance decides to put in an appearance.

"You can't have everything given back to you, just to have it torn away like it never existed. You need space, time to think, I get it." Anders cups Fenris' cheek in one hand, torn between heartbreak and gratification when the elf leans into the contact. "So we put some physical distance between us, once we get out of bed, at least. What I hope, though, is that whatever this fragile little thing between us is lasts. This thing that almost feels like friendship."

"I cannot promise to agree with your beliefs," Fenris warns.

"It's enough that you listen," Anders replies. "And that you challenge me. Justice doesn't understand that. At all. But I think we need our beliefs challenged. It keeps us honest, reminds us to think about why we believe what we do and not get complacent about it."

"You...want me to disagree with you?" Fenris sounds about as incredulous as Justice does, funnily enough.

"You wouldn't be you if you didn't. And I thrive best when I have someone to prove wrong about something." Anders chuckles. He's built his entire life around being a defiant creature, contrary, much like the cats he so adores. "Maybe you're never comfortable with this again and we never share a bed again. So I end up lying awake at night aching for you for a while and wallowing in a little unrequited lo-ust. I can survive that. But I like liking you a lot better than I liked disliking you.”

"You are a very strange mage."

"I've been told. Still, if you need someone to talk to, I'm here." Anders is somewhat grateful that either Fenris hadn't noticed his verbal slip up or the elf is simply too polite - because he can be polite, when he feels like it - to mention it. "I also wanted to thank you for listening to me. I put a lot of weight on your shoulders last night. And you still didn't throw me out on my ear."

"I seem to recall asking. But, you are welcome. And I would like that. Talking, I mean. I may not always be gracious about your overtures, but I appreciate them regardless."

Anders smiles, a little hopeful, a little relieved, a little sad. He kisses Fenris one last time before getting up and dressed in his damp clothes and bidding the elf farewell. He returns to his clinic to change into something drier and see to his patients.

***

He and Fenris remain friendly, in an adversarial sort of way. They never speak of that dark and stormy night when pain became passion and something a little bit like trust. They have their peace. Until, of course, their world begins to tear itself apart around them.

**Author's Note:**

> To anyone who read this over at the kinkmeme, you'll likely notice the massive change in tensing. I edited it to correct spelling errors and change it to present-tense to match Menagerie, which this preceeds. Plot bunny ran a little too Sue for my tastes, but insomniac rambling is what it is:)


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